Sam Liebeskind

The open protocol community has inherited two intellectual traditions, both inadequate to this problem: an engineering functionalism that treats protocols as neutral infrastructure whose political consequences are someone else’s concern, and a governance minimalism that treats any collective decision-making structure as a potential vector for the... See more

Strategic philanthropy has more difficulty funding bona fide organizers who are embedded in and responsive to the communities they serve. In contrast to their support for outspoken moral activists, philanthropic funders cannot meaningfully predict in advance what particular issue(s) grassroots organizers and their communities will prioritize. That... See more

Broader societal issues that are difficult to quantify and measure—such as desirable social values like human agency and respect for fundamental rights, power and resource asymmetries, and oppressive social structures—that are encoded in and/or intersect with algorithmic systems thus often fall outside the purview of “fairness” due to its narrow... See more

In the 1970s and 1980s, the philosopher of technology Langdon Winner dismantled the idea that technology is a “neutral” tool (Winner, 1978). Winner’s work emphasized how those developing technology benefit the most while already disadvantaged individuals and groups pay the highest price, laying the philosophical foundation for subsequent work in... See more